Host's Setup Guide — Taiwan Mahjong

★ The One Rule That Fixes Everything

Counter-clockwise = to your RIGHT.

Every single thing in this game — seat winds, whose turn is next, dice counting, dealer rotation — moves to the right. If you remember only one thing, remember that.

Winds and turns both flow East → South → West → North, always to the right. Note these are not compass directions — South sits where you'd expect West.

1 Pick Seats & the First Dealer

Fastest method that's still legit — do this once at the start of the night:

Pull the four wind tiles 🀀 🀁 🀂 🀃 out of the set, flip them face-down, shuffle them.
Everyone picks one and flips it.
Whoever gets East 🀀 stays where they are. Everyone else moves relative to them:
- South 🀁 sits on East's right
- West 🀂 sits across from East
- North 🀃 sits on East's left
East is the dealer (莊家) and holds the dice.

Even lazier and fine for a casual night: everyone rolls a die, highest is East, then going to their right is South, West, North.

2 Build the Wall

All 144 tiles face-down in the middle. Everyone shuffles ("washing the tiles").
Each player pulls 36 tiles and builds a row 18 stacks long, 2 tiles high, right in front of them.
Push all four walls forward so they form a square in the middle.

Quick sanity check: 36 tiles each × 4 players = 144. If someone's wall isn't exactly 18 stacks, tiles got miscounted — fix it now, not later.

3 Roll the Dice & Break the Wall

This is the part everyone fumbles. It's two questions: whose wall, and where in it.

Step A — whose wall?

You (East) roll two dice. Add them up. Then count around the table to the right, starting with yourself as 1.

Total	Whose wall gets broken
5 · 9	Yours — East
2 · 6 · 10	South (your right)
3 · 7 · 11	West (across)
4 · 8 · 12	North (your left)

Using three dice instead? Same rule — just keep counting around the table to the right until you run out of pips.

Step B — where in that wall?

Take the same number you just rolled. On that person's wall, count that many stacks from the right-hand end (right as the person sitting behind that wall sees it). Split the wall right there.

Example: you rolled a 6 and it landed on South's wall. Count 6 stacks in from South's right end, break there.

Left of the break = live wall. This is where all dealing and drawing happens.
Right of the break = dead wall (the next 8 stacks / 16 tiles). Only touch these for flower and kong replacement tiles, taken from its left end.

4 Deal the Tiles

You (East) grab 2 stacks — 4 tiles from immediately left of the break.
Then South, then West, then North each grab 4, continuing leftward along the wall.
Go around 4 times total. Everyone now has 16 tiles.
You take one extra tile → dealer has 17, everyone else 16.
Flowers: everyone flips any flower/season tiles face-up beside their hand and draws replacements from the dead wall. Go in order — East first, then South, West, North. If a replacement is also a flower, wait your next turn around before replacing again.
You discard first. Game on.

The direction thing that trips people up: players take turns going counter-clockwise (to the right), but the wall gets eaten in the opposite direction — always continuing leftward from the break, wrapping onto the next wall. Both facts are true at once. Just always draw the next untouched tile after the last one taken.

5 Whose Turn, and Where to Draw

Question	Answer
Who's next?	The player to the right of whoever just discarded.
Where do I draw?	The next stack along the live wall, continuing leftward from wherever the last tile was taken. Top tile of the stack first, then bottom.
I drew a flower 🀢	Flip it face-up in front of you, take a replacement from the dead wall, then discard normally.
I made a kong 槓	Same deal — replacement tile comes from the dead wall.
Someone called pung/chow	Turn order skips ahead to them. They don't draw — they take the discard, show the set, and discard. Play resumes to their right.
Wall's running out	When the live wall is used up, the hand is a draw. Nobody pays, you stay dealer, redeal.

6 If You Lose Track Mid-Hand

"Whose turn is it?"

Look at the newest discard. Whoever threw it — the next player is on their right. If nobody remembers who threw last, look at who has 17 tiles: that person hasn't discarded yet, so it's their turn.

"Did someone skip me?"

Count hands. Everyone should have 16 tiles (counting each exposed set as 3 and each kong as 3, not 4). Anyone with 15 got shorted; anyone with 17 owes a discard.

"Where were we in the wall?"

Find the gap. Draw from the stack immediately to the left of it.

"Someone called after the next person drew"

Too late — the call doesn't stand. Your house, your call, but the standard is that once the next player's hand touches the wall, the discard is dead.

7 Ending a Hand & Starting the Next

If East (the dealer) won, or the hand was a draw:

East stays dealer. Nobody moves seats. Rebuild the wall and go again. (This is 連莊 — a dealer on a heater can hold the seat a long time, and their wins are worth more.)

If anyone else won:

Dealer passes to the right. Nobody physically moves — everyone's seat wind shifts one step. The old South is the new East, the old West is the new South, and so on. Hand the dice to the new East.

A full game is 16 hands — each player deals four times. But end whenever people want to eat.

Payouts, in one line

Only the winner gets paid. Self-draw (自摸): all three losers pay. Won off a discard: only the discarder pays. Set a value per tai before the first hand so nobody argues later.